


Vigilante

by ushauz



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Gen, Justice!Velanna, Pre-Merrill/Velanna/Justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 13:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15664491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz/pseuds/ushauz
Summary: Justice was a friend, see, and she didn’t have those.And there were more wrongs and causes rattling around in Velanna’s bones than you could shake a stick at.





	Vigilante

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ember_Keelty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/gifts).



> This fic is for Ember_Keelty, who wanted either Justice possessing Velanna and/or Velanna/Merrill. I wanted to do both, but there is a lot of story you can write about Justice!Velanna as it turns out, so I only was able to write a set-up for such a romance.

The old Warden-Commander had been tolerable, though not one for idle conversation. Oghren claimed that she had once been more outgoing, but the wear of fighting the Blight had done a number on her. To Velanna, she had seemed primarily been concerned with ‘could you fight for the Wardens’ and ‘how to get you to fight for the Wardens’. She wasn’t subtle about it and never claimed to be, and Velanna had appreciated the honesty in that at least.

The new Warden-Commander was less than tolerable. She was a bitter human woman who disapproved of the methods Tabris had used to secure victory.

Within a single month, Anders disappeared. People seemed concerned over his disappearance which meant he likely hadn’t been dragged off and had his throat slit in and thrown into a ditch. Velanna was going to be the next one gone.

Oh, Velanna hadn’t _planned_ on it, but she and the new Warden-Commander didn’t see eye-to-eye. The new Commander didn’t understand the arrangement that Velanna had agreed to in order to become a Warden. See, Seranni had been spotted by a scout. Velanna had initially lost track of her after everything that went down, but her trail was there again, and the Warden-Commander refused to give her ‘permission’ to run after. Not even as a temporary measure as she didn’t want ‘another mage abandoning the post because one got away with it.’

Ha! As if she would ever do something purely because of what someone else did or did not do. She was insulted even, that her decision to leave was thought to have been influenced by Anders.

And it was now ‘to leave’. Originally, the plan was to come back after finding Seranni. After being told ‘no’?

Velanna did not do well with other people telling her what and what not to do.

Tabris might have understood. She was harsh and bitter for the most part, but she would have allowed Velanna to run loose. She would have understood that that was the price for Velanna being a Warden. She had only a few things to gather, small gifts and gear easily carried in a sack. She was a proper mage, after all, and knew how to travel through the earth and get food from the ground, how to set traps to paralyze animals, keep herself dry and at livable temperatures with practical magic.

There was only one delay keeping her here.

—

Sylvans required no upkeep. Spirits inside of trees had no problems, and as far as Velanna was aware of, spirits residing in the dead also rarely had problems. They remained as they were, frozen in state, unless the spirit actively warped their vessel. There was no reason for Justice to be decaying, but decaying he was.

“Help me to understand,” he had said once. And she had talked, and he had talked, and nothing had been accomplished, or so it felt like.

Yes, he agreed that it seemed humanity had greatly wrong elves. Repeatedly. In almost as many ways one could wrong another. (She would admit there was a small part of her that felt refreshed and vindicated that after showing a spirit of Justice the history of her people, the spirit agreed with her on this. The elves were wronged, a spirit of Justice agreed. It wasn’t as if she had ever doubted that they were wronged, because they were, but a nice breath of fresh air of vindication was always appreciated.)

He still maintained that as she had wronged innocent humans, she needed to atone to the human race. By trying to teach them; whether or not they listened did not apparently matter. This did not contradict the first statement in his view.

He was a sanctimonious, _irksome_ spirit, and he was her friend. Velanna didn’t have friends; Seranni had friends, and Velanna lurked in the background. She was too bossy, too loud, too obnoxious, rude and self-centered and boring, and all those traits also applied to Justice.

Who also was, for the most part, friendless and alone.

Perhaps a younger her would have worried about the dangers of projecting onto spirits as they were all dangerous. But now? Now she was exiled from her clan, people dead, Seranni far away, and her friend was inexplicably rotting away in a dead body.

She did not like having feelings. All those did was hurt inevitably.

—

“You are supposed to be his friend,” Velanna said coldly. “Shouldn’t you try to help him?”

They were all strangely friends of some level, this weird cluster Tabris had found, though a bitter part of Velanna wondered if that was only because they were all in the same boat: cast out and unwanted by others.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Nathaniel said.

“Or were you simply filling his head with fantasies of possessing a living host?” As if ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ ever stopped her. “He’s dying. Somehow, but he’s dying, and-”

“We tried,” he snapped, and she found herself stunned into silence. “It didn’t work.”

Possession was supposed to be one of the easiest things a spirit could do.

“How did it not work?” she asked. Anders might have been the only other one who knew more about possession, or at least how to prevent it as he stuck spirits inside of people for a specialty, but he was gone, and she remained. “That makes no sense.”

Nathaniel sighed. “Because it was fixed, I think. My name was restored, estate returned, and I’m not in the Wardens for the- the _just_ reasons.” It was a glorious and noble job for him, one he found that he enjoyed, but not a cause.

“Trees don’t have anger, but Rage possesses them just fine,” she said. And she would know. She never had problems drawing Rage spirits to her nor sticking them inside of trees, and they latched on easily enough. Why should this spirit need his domain to be so evident? Let him roam the world, righting wrongs and smiting evil as a tree. It would be a glorious sight to see.

“They already know what they are doing, I think. Justice doesn’t. All I know was whatever he is drawn to is not strong enough in me for him to latch onto. I don’t have a cause strong enough.” He didn’t meet her eyes. Was that out of shame? “So yes, actually, it seems I did fill his head with ‘fantasies’.”

—

Justice was a friend, see, and she didn’t have those.

And there were more wrongs and causes rattling around in Velanna’s bones than you could shake a stick at.

—

She didn’t remember if it was supposed to be temporary. They talked. The conversation overlapped in her mind, and it hurt to think about. Maybe it was just until they could find a proper expert to figure out what was wrong with Justice and send him on his way.

Or maybe they had agreed upon it, the cause suitable, justice for elves, and upon seeing the possibility of that as a goal, neither of them could be swayed from the path. Or maybe that had happened after the merger.

—

They had been seen off by the three remaining core Wardens (not any of the new ones the Warden-Commander brought with her.)

“If you ever feel like visiting, do stop by,” Sigrun said pleasantly enough. Velanna had talked with Nathaniel in private to keep an eye over her. Sigrun had bought into too many lies that Orzammar had fed her, and it made Velanna want to go tear something apart. (And that _was_ her, at least, as she had always felt that way about Sigrun.) She was a sweet, peculiar dwarf who liked to sniff dirt and was fascinated by magic and the stars; she didn’t deserve to feel so terribly about herself.

They fully knew Velanna was about to run off, of course. She hadn’t been subtle about it, nor about the corpse Velanna had dropped in front of Nathaniel before inquiring how to best prepare the body for Kristoff’s funeral.

“I would offer to send letters, but they might actually try to look for me,” Velanna said. Apparently desertion was a big deal, at least considering how they all reacted about Anders who still remained at large which was strangely pleasing.

“Oooooh use a false name,” Sigrun said. “Like in those spy books. Maybe a distant cousin of Nathaniel. You humans always have so many cousins, so I’m sure that’d be believable.”

She seemed well, but Velanna worried regardless. But she couldn’t stay here and also search after Seranni at the same time, and Nathaniel would be here.

“If you need us for any reason, send us a letter,” Nathaniel said.

“Or if you do find your sister. We’re rooting for you! Both of you.”

—

Moving through the earth had been limited. People needed air to breathe, after all, and one could only cast so much magic before one tired.

It had been limited. Had been, in the past, before. Now she stepped underneath and moved forward, surfacing later and later. The darkness and weight of the earth should have pressed farther down upon her, but part of her was unconcerned by the temporary lack of sight, of moving through space on feel alone. It made her feel strangely at peace. And it was so much faster than walking, which was good since the last sighting of Seranni had been a week ago and far away in the Free Marches, in the Deep Roads under Kirkwall, and she needed to make time to Amaranthine. A ship would go much faster than attempting to navigate the Deep Roads underneath the Waking Sea, after all.

Seranni came first. Everything else could be discussed and planned after, but Seranni came first.

She dusted herself off just outside of Amaranthine and made sure all her packs were doubly secure before approaching the docks to find a ship that could take her.

—

Even now, almost an entire year after the Blight, Kirkwall was reluctant to take in anyone who might be a refugee, something that infuriated her far more than it would have before.

That said, their plans on stopping people involved the ocean and the gates around Kirkwall. It didn’t account for someone who could move through earth. Shemlen never planned for such things, and it was painfully easy to slip into a lower part of the city.

She instantly regretted it. The lower part was a vile catacomb swimming in filth and rats and disease. And shemlen called elves filthy. No wonder they had so many illnesses and plagues. The smell was nauseating enough to make her vision swim, but she used magically enhanced vines to climb up some long shaft and into a large building filled with boxes, and from there, out into the open where she could at least see the sky.

There was still a smell. Slightly less nauseating, but there.

And there were more people than she had ever seen before, more than even Amaranthine, all packed in and scurrying past each other like ants swarming. Their voices overlapped into a mindless hum, and the sun glared down from above.

She felt ill. She didn’t know if the was the smell or the noise or the sun’s strange brightness, but she felt ill, like something vile was coating her in a layer of slime.

Ugh. How did shemlen live like this?

She wanted to take a breath to clear her thoughts, but that likely would only make things worse. What she needed was to find the local Warden outpost. They kept track of darkspawn movements as well as the movement of ghouls, and she needed to know if there was an update on where Seranni was.

Or if they had killed any ghouls recently.

This would have to be done discreetly, as she was currently a deserter, something that stung when she thought about it more than it should have. It didn’t matter, she told herself. The person who had respected her talents and who had brought her in was gone. The new commander was a cad unworthy of respect, and Velanna was not one for respecting those who had not first proved themselves.

Respect had to be earned, not simply passed to whoever claimed to be in command, or respect was meaningless.

Velanna decided to not ask for directions, as she didn’t want to interact with anyone here more than she absolutely must. Instead, she emptied her mind as best as she could and waited for those slight tugs that happened whenever there was a darkspawn or ghoul or Warden nearby. This proved to be difficult, not because she couldn’t get a reading, but because there were always more buildings in the way, causing her to divert to side passages upon side passages, most of which led to dead ends.

It was like they wanted the city to be as unnavigable as possible. Who built this? Who designed this city? It was poorly done!

Half her day went into finding where the outpost was, and when she finally did find where it was, she wanted to rip something in frustration because of course the building would be set into solid stone.

Earth was malleable, but stone was not as giving as earth. Not that she couldn’t if she tried—and so little seemed beyond her/their capabilities at the moment—but moving through stone was noticeable and left evidence. And a very visible hole. And rubble. She was not a discreet person, and she was noticeable twice over for first being an elf and then being Dalish. He was also not prone to discretion. Neither of them were, and between the two of them, the task seemed strangely impossible from the discreet angle, leaving them stand there feeling stunned.

Perhaps they would have come up with another plan, if they had a day or two to think about it, but before they could, they were approached by a stranger. Varric Tethras, as he introduced himself, businessman and celebrated author, and he was happy to see a new Warden around these parts.

“Why would you think I’m a Warden?” she asked. She had _meant_ to say she wasn’t one. It hadn’t come out. Frustrating.

“Because information is my business,” he said, and her eyes narrowed thoughtfully at that. “We need someone who knows their way around the Deep Roads, see, but I can assure you the pay is good.”

Velanna wasn’t entire sure what he meant by that, but it was probably rude. “I don’t have time to lead people about,” she said. “Get one of these Wardens.”

He didn’t budge. “They’ve already declined my polite offer several times. It’s hurt my feelings. Now you’ve been snooping around the Warden outpost but haven’t been entering, I noticed, which means you want something from them but don’t want them to know. How about if you let me help you, you help me in turn. Like I said, information is my business. Or rather, one of many.” He smiled charmingly.

Velanna didn’t feel particularly charmed, but.

But.

“I have maps,” she said finally. “I’ll give a drawn copy of them to you if you can get me information about…” She trailed off, uncertain how to phrase it. The last thing she wanted was for him to be too proactive about favors. “There is another Dalish elf in the area named Seranni,” she said. “She is sick and likely hiding in the Deep Roads, but despite what the local Wardens think, she is not Blighted. I need to find her before anything bad can happen to her.”

“And so first you need to know whether or not they already found her,” he said, now serious. “I’ll go snooping.”

—

They had no sightings of her, something that was both relieving and distressing at the same time, but Varric promised he would ‘keep snooping’.

“In the meantime, where are you staying?” he asked.

“Outside of this cesspit,” she said, “where I can breathe. The stench is less elsewhere.”

“With storm season coming? Rain’s going to get real bad here fast. Kirkwall at least is designed as a giant drainage system.” He sounded proud of this fact. There was something deeply wrong with this dwarf.

“I know how to survive outdoors,” she said.

He paused for a second, and she could almost see his eyes gleam thoughtfully. “But what if I find information about Seranni?” he asked. “It’d be hard tracking you down. Just until we find her, and then you can go out with all the bugs and leaves and nature to your heart’s content.”

“I am not made of coin,” she said. “Will you be putting me up?”

“Well I could, but I was also thinking someone could use a roommate.”

—

Velanna didn’t like the city elves at Amaranthine. They had gawked and whispered things about her. Loudly, to each other with her right in front of them. These gave her a brief look of mild curiosity before turning their noses, and she should have been offended.

The first footstep into the alienage was almost like a pressure headache. It built near the sinuses, spread hot pressure through her, twisted in her intestines. Malaise. She tried to ignore it, but it was as if it had burrowed under her skin, this constant, nagging irritation, and no she couldn’t blame that on stench. If anything, the air actually smelled better here than it did in “Lowtown”.

“Are you certain you can’t send a runner?” she asked Varric, and then she felt wrong for asking. Ugh.

The buildings were also mostly built out of stone, some wooden constructions, and a number were decorated with long, sweeping banners and colorful symbols. But all of them seemed almost pushed back away from the vhenadahl, which was lovingly decorated with paint and candles and tiny shrines, and that felt right.

Varric led her through all this to a plain door that he knocked at. Velanna wasn’t certain who she was expecting to see, but it wasn’t another Dalish elf.

She had messy hair and the widest eyes Velanna had ever seen on anyone to date. “Oh you’re _Dalish,”_ she said. “I didn’t think you would be Dalish. Varric just said ‘an elf’, and I halfway thought he had finally talked Fenris out of that mansion, but then that didn’t make sense because I don’t think Fenris would very much like living with me.”

When Velanna said nothing, the woman looked embarrassed. “Oh right you probably don’t know who Fenris is. He um. He doesn’t like me,” she said, and then she eyed the staff on Velanna’s back. “And he probably won’t like you either. Oh and I’m Merrill.” Merrill stood there a touch longer before saying, “Oh right,” once more and scurried out from standing in the doorway, gesturing for them to enter. “I tried to get the place cleaned up as best as I could. I almost found another bed, but I checked because Hawke told me to always check, and it had bed bugs, and I had to burn it. And then I found another bed, and that one also had bed bugs, so I burned that one as well. But I found what I think is a couch? It doesn’t have bed bugs. I checked anyway since ‘bed bugs’ don’t just live in beds which makes it a terrible name for a bug, don’t you think?”

It didn’t smell as badly in Merrill’s house. She considered that a vast improvement over most of the city.

Varric nudged her upper thigh with an elbow. “I’ll send information here when I get it, but if you like I could even just leave letters if you only wanted to occasionally check-in.” Varric then smiled warmly at Merrill. “Honestly Daisy you’ve really turned this place around. Wait, are those paintings? Where did you get paintings? Shit, those look expensive.”

“I had a spare room I was planning on using for something else,” Merrill said, and whether she didn’t answer the question on purpose or because she was lost in her own thoughts, Velanna didn’t know. “But it can be yours for now. It’s a bit quieter, but that means sometimes you can’t hear when the muggings happen. I haven’t been mugged yet, but I’m still hopeful.”

—

Velanna was not one for idly sitting around before, and the thought of doing so now felt like it was actively burning her. She made small forays into the tunnels underneath Kirkwall, but they were a labyrinthine maze. Still, she attempted. Occasionally she thought she found something, but it was always a stray, unintelligent darkspawn. It was better than lingering in that house. She reassured herself it would only be temporary, and that Merrill was also not currently with a Clan, unless she was a spy. She didn’t seem to have the temperament for a spy, and those often went without vallaslin.

No, likely Merrill was also banished. She hadn’t asked why Velanna wasn’t with a Clan, and Velanna hadn’t asked of her. And the better it would be if neither ever found out.

The thought disquieted her for some reason.

—

Not a week later one morning as she prepared for her daily, disgusting jaunt into the sewers, a knocking came. She hesitated as this wasn’t her house, but if it was information…

“Wait you aren’t Merrill,” said the human at the door. Velanna’s hopes, and mood, dropped. This wasn’t information then.

“No, that’s our helpful informant,” said Varric, lurking right behind. “This is Hawke, and that over there is Aveline. Hawke, that’s Velanna, and she’s why we are able to go on that expedition.” Hawke didn’t look enthused. “Is Merrill in? We need her for something.”

“No,” she said flatly.

“Still looking, I promise,” Varric said somberly. “I even got the extended family in on this who are all doing this for you free of charge.”

Hawke looked Velanna over critically. “So you are a Warden?”

“No,” she said.

“Can you help in a fight?” Hawke asked. Velanna then attempted to close the door, but Varric skittered across the threshold with surprising speed.

“Look, normally we’d ask Daisy,” Varric said soothingly, “but she isn’t around, and we need some help capturing a wanted escaped criminal.”

‘No’, she meant to say again, but she found herself frozen.

“We weren’t given the full specifics of what this guy did or what he could do,” Varric continued, and now inside the house, “only that a magistrate wants him back alive, and the normal guard has yet to succeed. Which doesn’t sound promising, so we are looking to go in with more people than we really need, just in case.”

“What did he do?” The words fell from her lips. Had she meant to speak?

Hawke shrugged. “Didn’t ask. He said he’d pay though.”

That was strangely souring. What someone did would be the most important question to ask, to know their level of guilt. To accept coin without even knowing the specifics first did not sit well with him.

‘With him.’ Himself. Justice. He had once wanted to see the world through a woman’s eyes, and if he was in a female body, wouldn’t he be feminine? Was it out of habit that he thought of himself as ‘he’? Was it simply due to his first brush in someone’s mind that he adapted to their gender? If he had first entered the unchanging world in a female body, would he have referred to himself as female, or would he be disquieted by it? He had never given much thought in the Fade, consumed by his purpose and not needing to interact with others enough to give too much bother to pronouns and thought of gender identity, though he had distantly known some spirits that had seemed, at the time, strangely obsessed with gender.

And yet he still remained ‘he’, even now in a female body.

He mulled over it, uncertain of why he felt this way, why gender should matter at all and yet still he remained masculine. At the very least, having some dividing lines between him and her may do them some good.

There was a hand being waved in front of her eyes.

“Stop that,” she said, feeling fully irritable.

Hawke stared at her with a blank face. “You just spaced out really hard there. You feeling okay?”

She wanted to look for Seranni and ignore this. She wanted her sister back.

“Very well,” she said. “I will go with you.”

—

They actually found Merrill at the next stop. She had managed to find her way to the Hanged Man somehow, which hadn’t been her destination but she wanted to rest in a familiar place while she tried to gain her bearings. Velanna was already committed at this point, so she found herself following along regardless with yet another human named ‘Isabela’.

“So what’s your name?” Isabela asked.

Her head hurt.

“Velanna,” Varric eventually said. “And boy is she a talker.”

You have no idea, she thought dryly. Before it had been a betting game on how many days before people started telling her to shut up.

Telling _her_ to shut up. Velanna.

“Let us find this criminal already,” she said, wanting to be done with this already, feeling buzzing under her skin. “I am busy and have other, better things to do.”

Isabela raised her eyebrows in a gesture so familiar Velanna almost felt soothed by it. Yes, that was the expression people made when interacting with her. Good. Perhaps it was a strange way to keep a hold of her identity, but whatever worked.

—

Hawke hadn’t wanted to talk to the merchant. Elren, he was called.

It was dead elvhen children. Dozens of dead elvhen children, and the man they were hired to bring back continued to walk free.

“Of course the guard won’t prosecute him,” Velanna said. “He’s human, and they are elven. That’s how it works, no? I’m surprised killing elvhen children is actually considered a crime. There are things humans are theoretically legally not allowed to do to elves? Consider me shocked.”

Merrill gave her an unreadable expression, or perhaps an expression that would be plenty readable to other people, but not to Velanna.

“Unfortunately, you are right,” Aveline said. “More or less; guards don’t prosecute people, but he would not be judged for this. Perhaps a slap on the wrist, if you could even get a trial considering his father is an influential magistrate. But I assure you, I am in favor of hard justice.”

That was reassuring to hear.

“We were told we need to bring him back,” Hawke said, and Velanna’s eyes narrowed.

“You heard the actual guard member right now, no? And have you not paid the slightest bit of attention to history? Justice will not be done. He will escape free as he always has,” Velanna said. And she, nor he, could not abide by that. He favored compensation, but the continued act of the torture and violation and slaughter of _children_ had to be dealt with death. And then his father, the magistrate, should spend the rest of his days paying back into the elvhen community for attempting to cover his son’s vile acts as well as dedicating himself to ensuring other noble’s crimes went properly punished.

“We will see how this goes,” Hawke said in a non-committal tone.

Velanna’s eyes narrowed. They would indeed.

—

They found Lia alive, and, while injured, not mortally so. She pleaded his case, citing ‘demons made him do those things’. That seemed to unnerve Hawke, while Isabela remained skeptical.

And then they found him.

He was talking. Velanna could hear sounds and see his lips move. ‘She had no right to be so beautiful, so perfect.’ ‘Needed to be taught a lesson.’

She saw him, in his entirety, every last moment with every child laid bare before her eyes, and fury burned inside her. There were no demons. (She had not thought for a second there were.) There were never any demons, merely a disgusting man blaming his own perversions on demons rather than admit the guilt of his own morality—and not his mind, for one could have _whispered thoughts_ and not act upon them, and she knew this from the Fade, people who had horrible thoughts and rightfully recoiled from them, not acting upon them.

There was never any excuse.

Hawke said something Velanna couldn’t make out, words coming through as if underwater, all the while dead children stared at her.

Justice stepped forward and removed the man’s head from its shoulders.

—

Velanna did not return to the house afterwards. The alienage made her skin crawl. Kirkwall made her skin crawl. She walked around the Storm Coast, getting her bearings, breathing in fresh air and seeing life flourish around her instead of nothing but stone with metal spikes driven in. She found herself calming, even if the slightest breeze did bite at her skin still.

She located a small creek to wash the blood off. It was cool and brisk. After she let her hand stay in the water, watching the water ripple around it. It wasn’t exactly soothing but rather grounding, and it allowed thoughts to return to her head once more.

Years it had been going on, and the guard had done nothing. That was unacceptable, and fury rattled in her lungs. Perhaps she might not be here long, just until she found Seranni, but as long as she was here, she could enact change. At the very least, she could deter humans from further such crimes. She feared not the law, after all, and the law might be driven to stop her.

Innocent people could get hurt; other elves could be targeted if justice was had. That was Ilshae’s fear. The humans could just idly attempt to burn down the Dalish for just ‘being too close to the farms for comfort’, and that was acceptable. No human would be punished, nor ever be punished. ‘Retaliation will just make things worse,’ Ilshae had said. Best to slip quietly away and let the humans think they killed the clan. That was how to survive.

The sheer wrong had choked her, the vast injustice of it all.

If she acted as a vigilante, they might target the entire alienage. And then what?

_Then we take them all. Every last person who dares take up arms against innocents will be properly dealt with._

Could she? She was a powerful mage before, but that was not within her reasonable capabilities. But now she was, for lack of a better word, an abomination, and according to what lore she knew, a powerful abomination could take down an entire clan.

But could she take an entire city if need be?

There was no use thinking about in the long term, she supposed, whisking her hand out of the water. She wouldn’t be here for that long. But she could try to train a rudimentary protective force, perhaps, maybe attempt to sway minds. That had never been her strong suit, but sometimes he had had success with that. And in the meantime, just until Seranni was located, she could be their guard.

—

Velanna hesitated by the door before knocking. She hadn’t been sure if she would return, not initially, but she was no coward and would rather face people’s words head on.

And, possibly, swords.

Merrill opened the door and gave her a curious look but let her in regardless. Velanna removed her shoes while Merrill busied herself with making tea, the only palpable way to drink anything in Kirkwall.

“So,” Merrill eventually said, holding her tea cup in her hands tightly, with both of them sitting at the low table.

“I am possessed,” Velanna said. She might as well get straight to the point.

Merrill nodded. “Is that why you are no longer with your clan?” she asked.

“No,” Velanna said curtly. “And that is no business of yours.”

“I’m a blood mage,” Merrill said in a rush. “I hadn’t said anything because Varric said not to say anything, and I know it’s more of a morally gray area among clans and differs from clan to clan, but my clan didn’t like it, and so now I live here.”

She was making the best of things. Truly, her house was far lovelier than many of the other houses around. Velanna never saw the ‘mess’ Merrill was always fussing about.

“Just for blood magic?” Velanna asked with a frown. That didn’t seem right.

Merrill hesitated. “Well… I have a project I’m working on, but the Keeper thought it was a bad idea. It’s a long story. And I don’t think she liked where I learned the blood magic from.”

When Velanna said nothing, Merrill continued further. “A demon.”

Velanna put down her tea.

“See, that is exactly the look many of my clan gave me,” Merrill said, exasperated. “I’d hoped you be a bit more understanding considering your… condition.”

“I am bonded with a spirit. Not a demon,” Velanna said frostily, and Merrill frowned.

“There’s no real difference,” she said slowly. “They are people from the Fade. The spirit/demon dichotomy was created by shemlen. Or I suppose the Chantry, since Isabela is a human and she says in Rivain they don’t group spirits and demons the same way the Chantry does.”

She was right, of course. ‘Demon’ was only used by the People for malevolent spirits or ones that sought deals. None could truly be considered trustworthy, and they were all equally dangerous.

Except no, that was wrong, and if anyone should know if there was truth in the distinction, it should be he.

A splintering pain jabbed right behind her eye.

“Well. If you still want the room, it’s there,” Merrill said, a touch frosty. “But I have yet to rip anyone’s head off with my bare hands, even if they did have it coming, so maybe think on that before judging me too hard. Though again, he absolutely had it coming, and it had been a glorious sight to behold. I was rather afraid Hawke would let him get away with it all, and then suddenly his blood was everywhere, and you were glowing, and it was quite spectacular.”

—

Seranni’s trail was still cold, and worse, there was no news of where she may have been seen next. She wanted to tear chunks out of the walls in frustration. She had even tried asking some of the darkspawn, just in case. All she got were shrieks and grunts.

“My people and my people’s people are all still looking,” Varric said, patting her thigh. Her ear twitched in annoyance. “If anyone ever sees or finds out anything, I’ll let you know.”

“No remarks on my ‘condition’?” she asked testily.

Varric shrugged. “Fenris can walk through walls and rip out hearts. Frankly if you wanted to be special, you should have showed up before he did. Not saying that a friendly abomination isn’t a strange sight to behold, but I’ve heard of abominations before, so he’s got you there.”

Fenris, as it turned out, was disdainful of magic, disdainful of spirits, and disdainful of the Dalish. This was despite the fact that he had _lyrium vallaslin,_ though he insisted his markings weren’t.

They did not get along, as Merrill predicted. Furthermore, she hated being in his presence. His lyrium always seemed to move both before and after he moved, and it had a tendency to scream at her. It was unpleasant to say the least. Part of her wanted to correct… something about the situation, even if she didn’t know what. Perhaps seek down this ‘Danarius’ and rip him asunder. And she could find him, she realized. There was a trail leading from Fenris all the way back from the sheer violation that had been done to him. He could track that trail, kill Danarius, but that still wouldn’t be full justice, though it would at least be _something._

And then Fenris would open his mouth, and she would find whole new ways to hate him.

Still though. He was an elf, and by her nature she-

No, he was no project of hers, no concern of hers. Let him rot in ignorance and hatred if he so chose. She had better things to do. There were plenty more wronged elves she could busy herself with.

—

Aveline seemed reasonable when they first met. She had agreed it was wrong at the time, and that his death may have been a necessity.

That was before she ‘abominationed out’ in Varric’s words, and now Aveline looked at her with open distrust.

“I need a copy of the law,” Velanna said.

“I’m sorry?”

Velanna gestured to the barracks around her. “The law of Kirkwall. Shemlen write everything down, and I need a copy of the laws of Kirkwall.”

“If you are curious, you are already breaking several,” Aveline began, but Velanna gave a dismissive wave.

“Can you or can you not get me a copy?”

“I haven’t been hearing the greatest things about you,” Aveline said.

“And you never will,” Velanna said. “I’m told I’m a very unlikeable person. ‘A shrill harpy’ has been said by a number of people, and if you don’t like what I’m doing, then fix the law. In the meantime, a copy.”

—

The guards didn’t patrol the alienage. Whatever happened there was no concern of theirs. Therefore, in lack of a competent and just guard (though Velanna had begun to send in suggestions to Aveline as she was now the new head of the guard), Velanna stepped into the role. No one else was defending them, after all, and Velanna had learned a few things about the condition of city elves from Tabris, at least in Ferelden.

They were not allowed to carry bladed weapons of any length. It was illegal to defend an elf from a human for any reason. Alienages could be purged if they got too unruly, and they often lacked basic living supplies. When she had sarcastically asked why they allowed themselves to be treated thusly and not all leave, Tabris had mentioned many lacked the skill to survive in the wilderness, or might have been sick or small or old or infirm or felt that they should be able to live on their land or many, many other reasons. That it was complicated, and also surely Velanna noticed how greatly the humans outnumbered them, and fighting back seemed nice and good and all, up until everyone was dead.

She had also then muttered something under her breath about ‘just like talking to Morrigan, I swear’.

Velanna knew she was unfair. She always hated cowardice, even among her own clan. But then, she got part of her clan killed, now didn’t she? Even if she could not have predicted ‘intelligent darkspawn’, their deaths were on her head.

She was still learning the rules the Kirkwall elves were subject to. Unjust or no, it still seemed important to know the framework she would be dealing with. Not necessarily to which she would be adhering, but dealing with. Not that she would be here long, mind, but for as long as she was here, it seemed prudent.

For example, Andrastianism was the only legal religion, even in Kirkwall. Worship of the Creators was strictly forbidden. Meanwhile, Merrill had discreetly put up a few statues of Fen’harel, cleverly disguised as dog statues. Velanna doubted most would recognize the difference.

“Are you sure that’s legal miss?” a human man had asked.

“I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be,” she said with the widest eyes. “Does Kirkwall not like statues? Statues were everywhere back in Ferelden, so I didn’t think anyone would terribly mind, and I just get so homesick, you know, and-” After a period of babbling with the most innocent expression, the person rolled their eyes and wandered off. Merrill then hummed happily and continued her work.

“Could be Andraste’s Hound,” Sol said, a withered man missing an arm. “They don’t mind as long as it seems like it’s the Chant somehow.”

Elves were not allowed to join the Chantry, of course. Velanna knew that even before the Wardens.

Out of twisted curiosity, Velanna had gone to see the building in this city. The one in Amaranthine had been spacious, enough for a camp to reasonably settle in.

This? With jutting, giant gold statues, converted from a magister’s estate, still holding the faint echoes of past wrongs never righted, and with enough room to easily host an _arlathvhen._ Usually it remained uncrowded unless on special days. Meanwhile, refugees were still denied entrance into the city. There was still a ‘funding’ problem for relief and aid programs, while gold and rich fabrics decorated that blasted building.

She could take some of them in, she supposed, but no one was hiring refugees, and aside from Hightown, there were not many places for people to live. Darktown didn’t count. She had seen Darktown and the conditions outside of Kirkwall. Outside would be better in the long run, even with the rain. At least one could find a hill to sit on and not worry about some flimsy wooden construction giving out and causing a flash flood in the sewers.

It itched that there was nothing she could do, and she tried to direct that more and more to things she could do, but the pile of ‘problems Velanna can’t solve’ was much larger than the pile of the problems she could.

So she watched over the alienage as Merrill baked (terribly) traditional meals for the holidays, gave out colorful streamers to children, and told small children various tales of the shenanigans Falon’din and Dirthamen got up to in their younger days.

There weren’t many tales, but she told them well, and the children seemed suitably entertained.

On impulse, Velanna found herself writing them down that night. She had heavily enchanted the journal Tabris gave her, making it resilient as she did not trust flimsy paper alone. Maybe these people would know more stories, ones she hadn’t heard of.

—

“I need your help with a mission,” Hawke said. Hawke had been trying to get her attention lately. She had been ignoring how heavily Velanna had been ignoring her, and now Hawke had her cornered in an alleyway.

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard me out yet.”

“I wasn’t exactly fond of how that last mission went,” Velanna said, and Hawke took a single step back. Velanna almost said something nasty before realizing there was a faint glow about her. Oh. Oh so she was more intimidating now? Now whenever she was right about some horrible injustice, people could now add ‘fear’ onto the list of emotions they experienced aside from ‘annoyed’ and ‘wallowing in ignorance’. “He went free again and again, and you knew that. And you were going to drag him back instead of ending him because our deaths don’t matter to you.”

“I wasn’t- I hadn’t decided,” Hawke said. She didn’t sound pleading or defensive. “I thought with more witnesses, maybe there could be pressure for a better trial or something. I don’t know how things work around here. I wasn’t sure I could be a very good witness, but maybe with all of us- I just accepted the job. I didn’t think I would have to make moral decision on it.”

“You just wanted your coin,” Velanna said contemptuously. “And what kind of person accepts a job hunting down a criminal and isn’t willing to take responsibility for it? Ugh.”

“I wanted both,” Hawke said. “And then I got freaked about the demons-”

“There weren’t any demons.”

“-about the _possible_ demons because how much of your own actions can be yours if there are demons involved?” Hawke then paused for a second, looking at Velanna, before moving on. “Uh, so anyway, he’s dead, on account of how you killed with with your own bare hands. Or talons at the time. But it worked out I think, and I need help tracking down some mage kid who is half elven and half human and find somewhere for him to go that isn’t a Circle. And since you’re, you know, Dalish, I figured you’d know a place that could take him.”

“I do not,” Velanna said. “I have not communicated with the clans in a while because I am exiled.”

“Oh, so they don’t like abominations either?”

“I wasn’t thrown out for possession.”

“So they are okay with possession?”

“That happened after.”

“Do you mind telling me the story-”

“Yes I do mind. It’s none of your business.” She paused. “But I will help you find a place for the child. I shouldn’t punish him just because you are a deplorable person.”

“Never claimed not to be,” Hawke said. “I mean I killed people for money I didn’t even get for a year, so ‘deplorable’ sounds about right. But I need that money. I’m okay being deplorable, but I don’t want my younger sister Beth to have to be a deplorable person to survive, and the only way is having enough money to hide behind when the Templars come sniffing around.”

“People tell themselves there’s ‘only one way’ to comfort themselves with the decision they’ve already made,” Velanna said, and Hawke winced. “Are you getting paid for this too then?”

“I honestly have no idea how it would make you react to offer you some of the pay.”

“You will not extort money out of worried mothers trying to save their child,” Velanna said.

Hawke winced yet again, and didn’t say anything. Velanna wasn’t foolish enough to take that as a sign of agreement.

—

Feynriel went to the Sabrae clan. Hawke, somehow, was more in favor than either Merrill or Velanna. While Merrill hadn’t heard of Velanna, Marethari had, and Velanna hadn’t received a warm welcome. She was, after all, exiled for getting a chunk of her clan killed.

Arianni began to visit from time-to-time. It was strained at first, all three of them exiles, but things began to ease over time, and eventually, they began to talk about their own exiles and the things they missed.

“I don’t blame them,” Arianni said. “Since sometimes the children end up looking human, and if other humans see the child…”

They assume the child was kidnapped and then attempt to burn the clan down to the ground.

Merrill patted Velanna’s arm, half-jolting her.

Arianni was able to help with Velanna’s small project, having heard the stories the alienage would tell. Half of them were of Gaharel, which apparently was the case for most alienages. Still, there were some variations on the tale she hadn’t heard from Tabris, and that was of interest.

And then there was the canticle of Shartan.

On one hand, the Chantry filled her with a seething fury.

On the other hand, the dissonant verses of the canticle of Shartan. Or what of those she could find, having been so thoroughly banned and destroyed over time. From the Chantry.

She never had any qualms with Andraste, just the Chantry, and Shartan was a major figure in elvhen history, whose actions helped lead to the temporary freedom of her people. And these stories weren’t just for her, but for elves, and some of them for their own strange reasons were Andrastian. Like Tabris. And at the very least, the canticle was in theory written by Shartan himself. Surely the memoirs of Shartan were worthy, and he came before the Chantry, before the Exalted Marches from Orlais.

Would having their own country be the best? What would stop people from invading again in the future? While it would be best if they still had the Dales, it wasn’t exactly feasible to yell at all the serfs living in the area to leave. The nobles, yes, but farmers with no other livelihoods?

True integration meanwhile held the risk of the loss of culture, even if she could somehow wrest equal rights from the law. There would have to be the freedom of religion itself, something that was impossible with the Chantry.

A massive religious force preaching the worthlessness of those not human that coincidentally sucked power back to Orlais. It was the institution itself, the gross power imbalance that needed to be fixed, and then perhaps restitution?

Trying to view the entirety left her head reeling and angry. No, she would focus on the small problems she could fix for now. Defend this alienage. Collect stories. Try to find Seranni.

—

Lia wanted to be a guardswoman. It was admirable, and the more elves there were in the guard, the less profiling would happen, and the more perhaps they would listen to the elves. Kirkwall was a cesspit, but at the same time, there was a strange potential about it. It was a city-state, able to create its own laws unbeholden to any king or even Chantry. If the leaders were less cowards, true growth could happen in the Free Marches.

“Or on ships,” Merrill said.

“What?”

“You were talking out loud again. Or to yourself, I suppose. Do you not notice when you do this? You talk to yourself an awful lot.”

She hadn’t noticed. She wanted to snap at Merrill, but Merrill always took her off guard. She never reacted the way people normally did, and it threw Velanna for loops. There was a way things went, and that was Velanna being loud and brash and ‘too angry’ and ‘too caught up in the past’, and then people scolded and/or avoided her.

Three outliers. One her sister, another a city elf who liked to vent and argue in equal measure, and the last a spirit prone to obnoxious arguments himself, and she thought that now in the fondest of ways.

“Isabela’s always saying how much freedom there is at sea ‘with no man to be beholden to’,” Merrill was saying. “Though she did say that I shouldn’t listen to too many of Varric’s stories because they are inaccurate which seems a shame because everyone is always so dashing in Varric’s stories. ‘Larger than life’, I think they say around here. Which seems a bit silly because life can get very large. I once saw a sylvan as large as a hill.”

Velanna snapped her fingers. “The Brecilian Forest?”

“Creators, I don’t know how people normally find their way,” Merrill said. “You just thought hard enough and the trees would take you where you wanted to go!”

“We spent some time there,” Velanna said. “I had to scold a tree into giving me back my books.”

“See, I talk about scolding trees around the others and they just look at me like I’ve lost my mind,” she said. “You don’t know how relieving it is to have someone else who understands. Or maybe you do.”

Velanna realized she was smiling. Faintly, but smiling. “How long did your clan stay there?”

“Over five years,” Merrill said. “I think. Time gets a bit weird the longer you stay. The seasons do funny things at least. Or maybe that’s just Ferelden.”

Velanna briefly wondered how large a sylvan the vhenadahl would make before guiltily abandoning that thought. The Templars would just be summoned to burn it down, and then likely the alienage. Not that fire necessarily worked on _her_ sylvans, but they would figure out how to kill it eventually.

Unless she killed all the Templars first. Unfortunately, the Templars were another institution, another idea, and ideas were hard things to kill.

“I like the statues,” Velanna said. “It’s good.”

“I’m just trying to share the culture,” Merrill said. “The people here could use that, I think. They seem interested, anyway, and then I realized none of them might have heard any stories if they hadn’t talked to Arianni, and that just seemed awful. If we Dalish struggle to recall our history, how much worse it must be for them. I’m not sure if the children are actually interested in the history or just like free treats and streamers.”

Or perhaps they also liked living in better conditions. The alienage elves didn’t quite shy away from magic like most of the shemlen did. (According to Tabris, there had been a few ‘apothecaries’ in the alienage that never got reported to the Templars.) That was good at least, since magic was the birthright of all elves. The basics were taught to all young children in the clan, just in case any of them manifested magic. It had been a joyous day when Velanna had summoned flame.

Velanna at least was taught many practical spells, as was likely Merrill: how to alter the ambient temperature in enclosed areas; how to draw out diseases and impurities from water; how to levitate an aravel a short distance off the ground for easier travels; and other such uses. While some of them weren’t useful in such rock-enclosed areas where people were packed in as tightly as possible, a number of them were, and she knew Merrill spent some time with the others in the alienage when she wasn’t wandering or visiting others.

Though she would disappear mysteriously from time-to-time. It wasn’t any business of Velanna’s however, as she didn’t come back smelling like forestry or caves and thus had likely not gone to visit her demon.

Which was a souring thought.

Velanna left the house shortly after.

—

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Varric; it was simply that she did not fully know him and thus knew neither the fullness of his character nor his capabilities.

One of the Wardens had a potted plant they were fond of. She had brought forth the tiniest sylvan. It was a delicate spell, as she strung multiple wisps inside. The spell connected them to each other with a strong magnetic pull, and then rooted that pull into the plant. When it came time for information, one of the wisps would seek her out and relay the information before being naturally pulled back.

Care was needed to cycle through the wisps at least once a season as otherwise the wisps could start forming into full spirits, usually of Curiosity or Paranoia, and that was significantly more work and risk.

She had also created such a sylvan out of a plant growing near the headquarters of the main guard barracks and then entreated the sylvan to remain out of sight.

Part of her felt a twinge of guilt at the invasion of privacy, but lack of knowledge had hurt her many times over as well as her clan. She had been taught the spell from Ilshae, in order to listen in on human settlements, give them a running start should it get into the humans’ mind to burn the Dalish camp down to the ground. Amaranthine had just been too large for it to be feasible.

It was magic that the rest of the Dalish could use. It would only help them, but many clans were wary of spirits, regardless of their nature, even if it was wispwork.

—

“I’ve been getting more reports about you,” Aveline said. “That there’s a tattooed elf matching your description who keeps harassing people.”

“’Harassing’ people? Ha!” Part of her wanted to lapse into a fit of giggles. She had yet to kill anyone, but then so far she had yet to find a crime that had to be repaid in death by Justice’s standards. “And who has had complaints? The human man who likes to visit the stall and ‘harass’ the workers? That human lady that likes to ‘harass’ elves by loudly yelling slurs every morning? That drunken group of humans who dropped dead cats in the water supply?”

“Kelder was an outlier,” Aveline said. “There is due process for crimes.”

“Some of that wasn’t technically a crime,” Velanna said. “Only half of the people I ‘harassed’ were committing a ‘crime’ by the law’s standard.” Some of them ended up tripping. Repeatedly. And the drunkards didn’t die if only because Velanna had tracked down what was in the water supply before anyone got seriously sick (a strange itching in her head that had led her there, and then visions of the people who had done it sprang in view). She then drew the impurities out of the water and into a pitcher which she then poisoned them with. Let them suffer the fate they would have inflicted upon others.

None of this was technically justice, she thought. What it was was a deterrent from stopping people to continue to try. ‘Petty vengeance’ maybe, but neither ‘petty’ nor ‘vengeance’ adequately summed it up either.

That said, should a situation like Kelder happen again, she absolutely would kill someone. That was never in question.

“You can’t just take the law into your own hands,” Aveline said. At least she sounded tired more than angry.

“Not with that attitude,” Velanna said. “And it isn’t as if Hawke is the bastion of legality.”

“Leave me out of this,” Hawke said, on her knees and refusing to look at anything but the trap she was disarming, and Velanna’s eyes narrowed.

“Neutrality only favors those in power,” Velanna said.

“Well it’s nice to know that Justice-abominations are intolerable,” Hawke muttered.

Velanna snorted. “Oh please. I was always this intolerable. I didn’t need some spirit’s aid to make me so.”

Merrill giggled for some reason, and it sounded so lovely.

…if it wasn’t for the _demon._

—

There was still no sign of Seranni. In her darker moment, she almost wished they’d at least find a body so she would know what happened because not knowing was so much worse. Her trail had simply vanished, and it was eating her alive.

And then one day, sitting in Merrill’s house and trying to decide on wording (or Justice was; one of them), she heard it. That sickly sweet faint song of the Blight. She jolted upwards and swiveled to stare right at whatever Merrill had just taken out of a bag in a corner.

“What is that?” Velanna asked.

Merrill already had it pocketed. “Nothing.”

“It sounded sick,” Velanna said without thinking. “Is it Blighted?”

Merrill gave her a strange look before slowly pulling out a small shard of something. “Well I suppose… you are Dalish and a Warden. Just… the last Warden I met destroyed it. This is all that’s left. But you can’t touch it. I’m sorry, but we don’t know each other that well yet, and you did yell at me earlier, and I can’t have it destroyed.”

“What is it?” Velanna asked again.

“A shard of an eluvian,” Merrill said. “It’s the real reason I’m not with my Clan. The Keeper didn’t think it was elvhen, but I swear to you it was. I have designs-” and then she darted off into another room, and Velanna trailed behind. Merrill pulled away a loose floorboard, and then pulled out another loose floorboard, and then cast a small spell that made the air pop before pulling out sheets of paper. “I drew it that night, but it was already destroyed, so it was still from memory. But look!” And she held up a sheet of paper with a strange mirror drawn on it. “See the architecture? Look at the base. That’s definitely elvhen, except my Keeper refused to believe me.”

Velanna frowned and took the paper from her. “That does look elvhen.” Not Tevinter which was where in theory the eluvians came from, but then Tevinter was built off what was stolen from the elves. Even the word was elvhen.

“Yes!” Merrill shouted before clasping her hands to her mouth. “Sorry. It’s just you are the first to believe me on this. Anyway, it’s elvhen, and it’s old, and thus it’s our duty to research it and learn more about it. It’s our _history.”_

“It’s Blighted,” she said again. “How does a mirror get Blighted? That makes no sense. Everything we know about the Blight says only living material can get infected.”

“I want to fix it,” Merrill said quickly. “Or I suppose fix and rebuild it. The first step is removing the Blight from the shard.”

‘Remove the Blight’. It sounded ridiculous, and yet… “Is such a thing even possible?”

“It definitely isn’t if no one tries,” Merrill said stubbornly. “Honestly I don’t know if removing the Blight or rebuilding the mirror will be more difficult, but I’m not giving up. I barely even got started, and I think I’ve made some progress with the water-purification method, trying to draw the Blight out and into something else. I would still have to dispose of the Blight then, but maybe you could help with that. The hard part is I think the mirror was infused with lyrium of all things, and so trying to draw on that gets- well you know how it gets.” She paused for a moment before giving her a warm smile. “Frankly it’s nice that you know now so I don’t have to pretend I’m not conducting strange magic experiments in the basement, and really you are a Warden and so maybe that can help.”

Maybe Seranni could also help. Seranni was a ghoul who did not hear the Calling. Darkspawn could be uplifted and given intelligence with a ritual requiring Warden blood, severing them from the Calling. Wardens ingested a prepared darkspawn blood under high potencies to temporarily immunize themselves to the Calling while still technically suffering the Blight. Blood, lyrium, and Blight. It felt as if there was a vast web out of sight that she was only just now becoming aware of, sitting at the crossroads of a mere few threads.

Merrill was still talking, Velanna realized. “…but that’s a lot of magic, and I’m not made of lyrium like Fenris. Hence the deal with the demon.”

“All the demon wants to do is trick you,” Velanna said crossly, snapped out of whatever partial epiphany she could have been having.

“Possibly,” Merrill said. “He is teaching me a lot though, and I didn’t know a lot of blood magic before. Just a little bit. So really the demon is the only thing you disapprove of? That’s it?”

“Yes,” Velanna said. “It is good of you to try to restore our history, and to take on this task?” This was the sort of refined research the Dalish should back! Why wouldn’t they? It made no sense. “You do not need some demon’s aid.”

“He’s old though, from before Tevinter even,” Merrill said. “He knows so much, but I’m careful. I’m not a child.”

“It is foolish to think you have the upper hand on a demon,” Velanna said.

“It’s okay that you don’t trust me yet,” Merrill said. “But I am cautious. And he can’t help what he is.”

“Perhaps he cannot help what he is, but he can choose what to do with it,” Velanna said strongly. “Even Fear can still be a spirit or a demon depending on how they chose to approach their domain, and whether or not they will extort and abuse innocents for power. There is never an excuse.”

“That’s a different definition of demon than the ones Dalish use,” Merrill said with a strange, lilting knowing tone, and Velanna found her head hurting at that. “In that case, I don’t know if this one is a spirit or a demon. Mostly he sounded lonely, and he was very nice about teaching me blood magic.” She paused for a second. “I would prefer to have someone there though when I go talk to him. It’s nothing personal, just that he’s been trapped there for a very long time, and just about anyone would get up to all sorts of nefarious deeds in order to get out of such a place. Of course I don’t know for sure he’s a nice demon either, and he wasn’t imprisoned there because he was some all-powerful demon so he might have gotten up to some deeds. Hence, I’m hesitant about releasing him, because then everything he got up to would be my responsibility.”

Velanna didn’t know what she felt. It was like when she found out there was more information with Nathaniel than he had-

Ugh.

Okay, so, _Justice_ wasn’t sure what he felt, other than perhaps desiring more information. That was what he felt. What did she?

Merrill stood there, surrounded by diagrams and experiments and fueled with a true passion for their history. She understood. And Justice may damn her, but Velanna would make a pact with a demon for such things as well.

“I want to help,” Velanna said.

Merrill smiled and took her hand, and Velanna felt her heart flutter.


End file.
